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ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: LNG2014-1176
Athens Institute for Education and Research
ATINER
ATINER's Conference Paper Series
ENGEDU2016-2147
Robotics as Part of a 21st Century School Curriculum
Dalene Gelderblom
Curro Holdings Ltd
South Africa
Alta Greeff
Curro Holdings Ltd
South Africa
1ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: ENGEDU2016-2147
An Introduction to
ATINER's Conference Paper Series
ATINER started to publish this conference papers series in 2012. It includes only the
papers submitted for publication after they were presented at one of the conferences
organized by our Institute every year. This paper has been peer reviewed by at least two
academic members of ATINER.
Dr. Gregory T. Papanikos
President
Athens Institute for Education and Research
This paper should be cited as follows:
Gelderblom, D., and Greeff, A. (2016). " Robotics as Part of a 21st Century
School Curriculum", Athens: ATINER'S Conference Paper Series, No:
ENGEDU2016-2147.
Athens Institute for Education and Research
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Printed in Athens, Greece by the Athens Institute for Education and Research. All rights
reserved. Reproduction is allowed for non-commercial purposes if the source is fully
acknowledged.
ISSN: 2241-2891
01/03/2017
2ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: ENGEDU2016-2147
Robotics as Part of a 21st Century School Curriculum
Dalene Gelderblom
Curro Holdings Ltd
South Africa
Alta Greeff
Curro Holdings Ltd
South Africa
Abstract
It is generally accepted that knowledge alone is not enough to embrace the
challenges of the 21st Century. A set of skills and dispositions, known as the 21st
Century Skills, should be acquired to successfully face and solve complex
problems in life and in the workplace. At CURRO we continually investigate
new educational tools that can assist learners in developing these skills. The
current paper hypothesises that Educational Robotics is an excellent tool to
achieve exactly that, if implemented effectively. It is important to note that, in
the current educational paradigm, Robotics is mostly taught extramurally to
support the teaching of Physical Science and/or Information Technology to a
select few. By doing this, the opportunity is neglected to develop the desired 21 st
Century skills in all learners. The major challenge is to integrate Robotics in the
formal school curriculum at an early stage as implemented by the CURRO
school educational programme. By doing this, all our learners are exposed to the
benefits of Robotics. This programme is a tool with which learners are
introduced to the very important skill of coding; we trust cognitive awareness
will be cultivated and the skills needed to face future challenges will be
developed.
Keywords: Educational Robotics, 21st Century Skills
3ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: ENGEDU2016-2147
Introduction
The Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (T21CS) document
(Griffen & Care, 2012) states that today’s curricula do not prepare students for
living and working in an information-age society. The result is that first time
workers often enter the workplace without the required 21st Century Skills
categorised as follows:
ways of thinking – creativity, critical thinking, metacognition
ways of working – collaboration, communication
tools for working – information literacy, information and communication
technology
living in the world – citizenship, life and career, personal and social
responsibility.
It is therefore important that today’s curricula not only cover reading,
writing, mathematics and science, but also develop these skills to prepare
learners for life and employment in the future. For the purpose of this article the
focus will be on the ways of thinking and working and the use of technology in
developing and teaching them.
The Framework for 21st Century Learning, confirms that learners need and
deserve learning opportunities to prepare them for the challenges of work, life,
and citizenship in the 21st Century. According to Professor Guy Claxton
(Claxton, 2002), the father of Building Learning Power™ (BLP), we need to
educate not only for exams, but for lifelong learning in order to keep on
developing the necessary skills, dispositions and abilities to succeed in everyday
life and challenging working environments. “It is about creating a climate or a
culture in the classroom - and in the school more widely - that systematically
cultivates habits and attitudes that enable young people to face difficulty and
uncertainty calmly, confidently and creatively.” (Claxton, 2012). According to
Jean Piaget (1952) intelligence is "knowing what to do when you don’t know
what to do" (Piaget, 1952) and Lauren Resnick defines it simply as "the sum
total of your habits of mind” and habits can grow and change. In other words,
intelligence CAN grow and change! (Resnick, 1999)
The notion is that that Robotics is an exciting multi-disciplinary area that
will dominate the 21st Century (Burbaitė, et al., 2013). In CURRO schools
Educational Robotics is part of the formal curriculum from Grade 2 to Grade 6.
It can be defined as a set of educational activities through which specific areas of
knowledge are supported and strengthened and through which specific skills can
be developed by designing, creating, assembling and programming robots.
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Academy, a leading player in the
Robotics field, state that when one teaches Robotics it is an opportunity for
teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (the STEM
subjects) in contexts that engage students as it is easy to grasp (2014). They
believe that Educational Robotics may be the answer for developing the above
mentioned skills and for preparing young people to face the challenges of this
4ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: ENGEDU2016-2147
century. Robotics will develop the necessary competencies in learners required
in the new economy, an aspect that is often neglected in current school curricula.
(Carnegie Melon, 2014)
The objective of this article was to see how and if Educational Robotics is
used as a tool for teaching 21st Century Skills. In section “Background” a
background is given of what was found in the literature. The specific 21st
Century Skills is discussed in section “21st Century Survival Skills” while the
current state of affairs in education is discussed in section “Education in the
Present World.” Robotics as a teaching tool in the 21st Century and the idea that
coding can be seen as part of the new literacy is explored in sections
“Educational Robotics as a Tool” and “Coding – a New Language.”
The section “What is Needed,” addresses some of the needs to ensure
effective 21st Century teaching and learning. Current and future pedagogy, what
the new workplace requires and demands and the challenges regarding the
teaching of Robotics as part of a formal school curriculum, are discussed in
sections “Pedagogy”, “The New Workplace” and “Demands and Challenges.”
In “Conclusions,” the road ahead is deliberated.
The literature search was performed using Google Scholar and EBSCOhost
databases searching for Educational Robotics, 21C Skills and Critical Thinking.
This study focused on English articles published between 2010 and 2015.
Background
Prospects of the 21st Century are completely different to anything known
before and technology has become a major influence in our everyday life.
Therefore, technology should become part of any modern education system - not
only to be used passively, but also as a tool to engage and create with!
21st Century Survival Skills
In the book, The Global Achievement Gap, Tony Wagner (Wagner, 2008a)
states that there are seven survival skills that people will need. They are:
critical thinking and problem solving
collaboration and leadership
agility and adaptability
initiative and entrepreneurialism
effective oral and written communication
accessing and analising information
curiosity and imagination.
“We need to use academic content to teach these seven survival skills every
day, at every grade level and in every class” (Wagner, 2008b).
5ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: ENGEDU2016-2147
Education in the Present World
Pepper, the first humanoid robot capable of understanding human emotions
and designed to live with humans, has been developed and introduced to the
world on 5 May 2015 by Softbank Mobile in Japan. Educators are challenged to
prepare learners for this rapidly changing world we live in and to meet
challenges in the technological world after the fourth industrial revolution also
known as robotization.
Although we are surrounded by technology, very few people appreciate
and/or comprehend the technical side of how it operates. Not many school
curricula teach learners to question or think about technology with the result that
they become consumers of technology rather than engaging with it and using it
as tools to create with (Eguchi, 2014). There is a need for modern technology to
be introduced into our classrooms to excite our learners about the STEM
subjects and to develop a variety of thinking and social skills (Saygin et al.,
2012).
“In so far as every science depends on data for both theory and application;
laboratory or field data collection experience is an absolute necessity.
Adding up numbers from a textbook example is not the same as recording
those numbers or qualitative observations based on one’s effort. When
students “own” their data, the experience becomes a personal event, rather
than a contrived exercise.” (George & Bragg, 1996)
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
reported “technology everywhere, except at school” (OECD, 2008). More and
more countries are realising the importance of ensuring that school leavers are
computer literate. In September 2014 the UK Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) curriculum was replaced with a new “coding” curriculum
introduced at age five. The UK Department of Education realized that the skills
mastered when learning to code will be valuable in life even if the technologies
used to teach it may become out-dated. (Gove, 2012)
According to Debating Europe, 90% of European jobs require ICT skills,
and yet there will be 900 000 unfilled ICT positions in the EU by 2020 (Anon,
2015). Less than 15% of European students have access in school to high-level
ICT teaching (Collins et al, 2014). That is why the Europe Code Week was
launched for the first time in 2013 by Neelie Kroes' Young Advisors with the
support from DG Connect at the European Commission.
During Code Week 2014 all around Europe, more than 150 000 people,
young and old created apps, websites, games and many other fabulous things by
learning to code. In 2015 Code Week Africa was launched involving more than
80 000 children in 17 countries at 100’s of workshops (Africa Code Week,
2015).
6ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: ENGEDU2016-2147
Educational Robotics as a Tool
A growing number of people believe that the best learning happens when
learners are actively engaged in designing and creating things (Resnick &
Silverman, 2005). Robotics is an excellent way of achieving exactly that and is
generally seen as one of the most effective and child friendly tools for teaching
coding in a funfilled way in an attractive learning environment (Turner, 2009)
(Eguchi, 2010). It is a mixture of theory and practice and supports Papert’s
Constructionism Theory which takes Piaget’s Constructivism Theory one step
further. It states that learning is “building knowledge structures” which happens
most effectively “where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a
public entity, whether it's a sand castle on the beach or a theory of the universe.”
In other words, learning happens best by making (Papert & Harel, 1991).
Robotics also has the potential to develop the above mentioned survival
skills - skills that are deemed to be essential in the 21st Century (Benitti, 2012).
The idea is not only to allow learners to build from instructions, but to allow
them to design and programme their own models and to explore the ideas
underlying their constructions (Resnick & Silverman, 2005). In Robotics
learners should spend most of their time doing rather than listening as it gives
them ownership of concepts in a way they don’t get from traditional teaching
(Gifford, 2014). It should be hands- and minds-on.
Most commonly, Educational Robotics is used to aid in teaching science or
information technology, (Veselovska & Mayerova, 2014) but rarely to
supplement the arts or languages or purely to develop 21st Century skills
(Khanlari, 2013). Robotics improves problem solving skills, critical thinking,
creativity, decision making, team-work, self-confidence, all of which are
included in Tony Wagner’s skills set according to (Khanlari, 2013.). According
to Saygin et al, it promotes active reasoning and enhances student’s interest and
motivation to address complex or abstract problems (Saygin, et al., 2012). In
summary, Robotics has a positive impact on the development of 21st Century
skills (Mubin, et al, 2013), (Alimisis , 2013).
Coding - a New Language?
Coding, programming and computer science will be the language of the 21 st
Century. "In a world that's increasingly run on technology, computer science is a
liberal art that every student should be exposed to, regardless of their path in
life,” remarks Hadi Partovi co-founder and CEO of Code.org (Tyre, 2013).
“In terms of cognitive advantages, learning a system of signs, symbols and
rules used to communicate - that is language study - improves thinking by
challenging the brain to recognize, negotiate the meaning and master different
language patterns. Students who speak English and Mandarin are better
multitaskers because they're used to switching between language structures.
Coding does the same thing, involving understanding and working within
structures” (Adam & Mowers, 2013).
7ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: ENGEDU2016-2147
What is needed
In order to determine the needs for the future, it is important to critically
look at the current pedagogy and curricula as well as at what is needed in the 21st
Century workplace. The challenges and demands of teaching Educational
Robotics as part of a formal school curriculum also need to be considered.
Pedagogy
In the traditional mode of teaching, knowledge is transferred one
directionally from a teacher to the learners. Most learners taught in this way do
not have the ability to apply the acquired knowledge in different situations, to
effectively communicate and/or apply it creatively. It is therefore imperative that
new strategies and ways of teaching to develop these skills should be adopted.
Learning 21st Century skills requires 21st Century teaching (Saavedra & Opfer,
2012).
The New Workplace
20th Century padagogy needs to be adapted if we want to prepare learners
for the workplace of this century. As the need for workers with computer science
skills is exploding, the number of young people mastering those skills is actually
reducing. According to Code.org the need for positions in computer
programming grows at twice the U.S. national average (Code.org, 2015).
Despite the need less than 2.4 percent of college students graduate with a degree
in computer science. (Adam & Mowers, 2013)
Educational Robotics may be one way of getting more young learners
interested in a qualification in coding. Robots should not only be seen as mere
tools, but rather as tools to engage learners, having the potential to develop skills
and new ways of thinking and learning (Burbaitė, et al., 2013). Robotics is more
than building robots - it is about combining motors and sensors, programming
and solving real world problems and developing essential skills in the process
(Gifford, 2014).
Demands and Challenges
These skills are however more demanding to teach and implementing a
Robotics programme in a school poses a number of obstacles and challenges.
One of the biggest of these is finding and training the appropriate
teachers as Robotics has to be taught differently from most other
subjects. Problems rarely only have one correct solution and it involves
failing and trying again and again. Teachers as well as learners should
embrace the process rather than only finding the right solution. Many
teachers are intimidated by this new approach as they have rarely been
trained to teach Robotics during their formal education. Without
8ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: ENGEDU2016-2147
motivated and well trained expertise it is a major challenge to
successfully add Robotics to the curriculum (Gifford, 2014).
Another need is the availability of well developed formal curricula as
most institutions consider Robotics co-curricular and not as part of the
formal school curriculum (Mubin, et al, 2013).
As most Robotics programmes in schools are presented as co-curricular
activities (Benitti, 2012) little data is available regarding the effects of
Robotics on learners as part of a formal school curriculum. This implies
that most learners are excluded from the opportunity to learn and master
coding. Furthermore, Educational Robotics is normally used to teach
science or IT related subjects.
Teaching Robotics is time consuming and time tables have to be adapted
to provide ample time for this activity.
It also requires teachers to manage the costly sets and to keep the many
small pieces together.
Lack of a proper venue where the laptops, sets and and other resources
can be permanently set up and stored, causes frustration with teachers
and learners as it is too time consuming setting up a class before each
lesson.
Lastly there is a general perception that Robotics is difficult and that girls
do not really enjoy it at as much as boys (Alimisis, 2013). These
misconceptions needs to be addressed, minimised and/or erradicated.
The 21st Century skills are not only difficult to teach - it is even harder to
assess as they are transcending across all subjects. It is however believed that
individuals, organisations and nations that succeed in the 21st Century are likely
to be those, in which this full range of skills has been developed in an integrated
way (Orpwood, et al., 2012). Therefore, despite the above mentioned obstacles,
Educational Robotics may be one of the most effective and rewarding ways to
supplement curricula and to introduce 21st Century teaching to develop skills,
promote iterative learning and to understand and engage with technology in the
process. Notwithstanding the challenges of implementing Educational Robotics
as part of a school curriculum, the excitement and fun filled learning should be
most rewarding for all involved.
Conclusions
The literature review revealed that educational Robotics is most commonly
used to support the teaching of Physical Science and/or IT in schools. Very little
evidence could be found of the possible positive effects of such a programme on
the mentioned 21st Century skills.
In order to address this need for evidence, a longitudinal study will be
conducted in selected CURRO schools. The development of these skills will be
monitored in learners (11 -13 years old) before, during and after completing the
Intermediate Phase CURRO enriched programme including Robotics. The
9ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: ENGEDU2016-2147
results of this study will be recorded, analysed and documented as a contribution
to quantitative data on the development of 21st Century Skills in CURRO
learners.
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